Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(88)

They climbed with their own hands and feet, Katsa helping Bitterblue up the steepest slopes, and lifting her onto rocks too big for her to climb. Thankfully, on the day she’d slid down the walls of her castle clinging to knotted sheets, Bitterblue had worn good boots. But she tripped now over her ratty dress. Finally, Katsa cut the skirts away and fashioned them into a crude pair of trousers. The girl’s passage after that was faster and less frustrating.

The saddle leather was stiffer than Katsa had anticipated. She fought with it at night while Bitterblue slept, and finally decided to cut the girl four makeshift leggings, one for each lower leg and one for each upper leg, with straps to tie them in place over the trousers. They looked rather comical, but they gave her some protection from the cold and the damp. For more and more often now, as they trudged upward, snow drifted from the sky.

———

Food became scarce. Katsa let no animal go to waste; if something moved, she brought it down. She ate little and gave most of their food to Bitterblue, who gobbled down whatever she was given.

In the light of each morning, Katsa removed the girl’s boots and checked her feet for blisters. She inspected the girl’s hands to make sure that her fingers weren’t frostbitten. She rubbed ointment into Bitterblue’s cracked skin. She handed Bitterblue the water flask every time they stopped to rest. And Katsa stopped them often for these rests, for she began to suspect that this child would collapse before admitting she was tired.

Katsa was not tired. She felt the strength of her arms and legs and the quickness of her blade. She felt most acutely the slowness of their pace. At times she wanted to hoist the child over her shoulder and run up the mountainside at full tilt. But Katsa suspected that eventually on this mountain she would need every bit of her strength; and so she must not exhaust herself now. She curbed her impatience as best she could, and focused her energies on providing for the child.

———

The mountain lion was a gift, really, coming as it did at the beginning of the first true snowstorm they encountered.

The storm had been building all afternoon. The clouds knitted together. The snowflakes swelled and sharpened.

Katsa made camp at the first possible place, a deep crevice in the mountain sheltered by a rocky overhang. Bitterblue went off to collect kindling, and Katsa set out, her dagger in her belt, to find them some dinner.

She struck a path upward, over the sheet of rock that formed the roof of their shelter. She headed into one of the clumps of trees that grew skyward on this mountain, roots clinging more to rock than to soil. Her senses were alert for any movement.

What she saw first was the slightest flicker, in the corner of her eye. A brown flicker up high in a tree, a flicker that curled and lifted, different somehow from the way a tree branch moved; and the limb of a tree that swung in an odd way – bounced, really, not as a wind would move it, but as if something heavy weighed it down.

Her body moved faster than her mind, recognizing predator and comprehending itself as prey. Instantly her dagger was in her hand. The great cat plunged, screeching, and she hurled the blade into its stomach. As she dropped and rolled away, its claws tore into her shoulder. Then the cat was upon her, great heavy paws slamming her shoulders against the ground and pinning her to her back. It came snarling at her, claws swiping and teeth bared, so fast that it was all she could do to keep her chest and neck from being ripped apart. She wrestled with its hopelessly strong forearms and swung her head away as its teeth came crashing together right where her face had just been. It slashed her breast savagely. When its teeth lunged for her throat Katsa grabbed its neck and screamed, pushed its snapping jaws away from her face. The animal reared above her and raked her arms with its claws. She saw a flash of something in its stomach, and remembered the dagger. Its teeth descended again and Katsa swung out, smashing its nose with her fist. It recoiled for the merest second, stunned, and in that second she reached desperately for the dagger. The cat lunged again, and Katsa thrust the dagger into its throat.

The cat made one horrible hissing, bubbling noise. Then it collapsed onto Katsa’s chest, and its claws slid away from her skin. The mountain was quiet, and the lion was dead.

Katsa heaved the cat away. She propped herself onto her right elbow and wiped the animal’s hot blood out of her eyes. She tested her left shoulder and winced at the pain. She choked back an enormous surge of irritation that she should now have an injury that might slow them down; and she tore open her coat and sighed, disgusted, at the gashes in her breast that stung almost as badly as those in her shoulder. And other rips and tears, she realized now, as each movement uncovered a new sting. Smaller cuts, on her neck and across her stomach and arms; deeper cuts in her thighs, where the cat had pinned her with its hind feet.

Well, there was no reason to lie around feeling sorry for herself. The snow was falling harder now. This fight had brought her injury and inconvenience, but it had also brought food that would last them a good long time, and fur for a coat that Bitterblue very much needed.

Katsa heaved herself to her feet. She considered the great lion that lay dead and bloody before her. Its tail – that’s what she’d seen lifting and curling in that tree. The first clue that had saved her life. From head to tail the cat was longer than her height, and she guessed it weighed a good deal more than she did. Its neck was thick and powerful, its shoulders and back heavily muscled. Its teeth were as long as her fingers, and its claws longer. It occurred to her that she had not done so badly in this fight, despite what Bitterblue would think when she saw her. This was not an animal she would have chosen to fight in hand-to-hand combat. This animal could have killed her.